A rupture in the earth throws two unsuspecting women, Annie Mills and her great aunt Sarah Ann Mills into each other’s centuries. Tied together by their love of 19th Century women’s history and literature and their passion for research, they share just enough similarities to enable each to adjust to their new time–though certainly, being jettisoned into the past is certainly a lot easier than trying to understand 20th Century technology and science.

Annie: After receiving her fifth rejection on her new book as well as a negative response on her proposal of marriage to her longtime boyfriend, Annie Mills turns on her TV to escape her depression. Instead she is caught in the 1989 Santa Cruz earthquake that mysteriously catapults her back into the 19th Century. There she has to overcome the challenges of a new time, a new family, and the burgeoning emotions she is feeling towards the handsome town doctor. However, her need for intellectual acceptance and the desire to be more than a schoolmarm and then a farmer’s wife could limit her opportunities in this world where women didn’t even have the right to vote let alone become accepted for their minds.

Sarah, on the other hand, wakes up to a world one hundred years into the future. There she not only has to deal with the pain of a broken back, but she has to deal with the technology, the mores, and the dress codes of men and women in 1989. Plastic? Television? Automobiles? These are just a few of the obstacles she has to overcome. She is now without a support system, no family, and an annoying suitor who loves her for her money.

How both young woman manage to make these new worlds work for them is an interesting journey for each.